For journalists, relationship with social media is complicated

More journalists now believe social networks bypassing traditional media is the biggest challenge facing journalism, when compared to the results of the 2018 survey, the latest Cision Global State of the Media Survey shows.

It says more journalists now also believe social media algorithms will be the technology with the biggest impact on their work this year. 2018 was a rough year for social media and journalism. Facebook faced a number of challenges: from data privacy issues to concerns about the accuracy of their engagement metrics. Publishers realise they can’t rely on Facebook as a distribution platform the way they thought they could.

However, according to survey findings, journalists still rely on social media to stay connected to sources and real-time news. Social data is also more important that ever, in helping determine which stories resonated.

Journalism’s relationship with social media continues to get more complex. 38% of journalists Cision surveyed agree that updated social media algorithms—such as changes to the Facebook News Feed—will be the most important technology to impact their work in 2019, an increase over last year. At the same time, artificial intelligence dropped in importance this year. Changes to social platforms have impacted publishers in a big, often negative way, the survey established.

“I still use social media, but I definitely am not on it all day like I used to be. Journalists still use Twitter a lot. And I do think that we’re getting pretty burned out on it, but it hasn’t really fallen out of favor. We still follow it for news,” one responded said.

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According to Cision, journalists and PR pros should not put all of their eggs in one social platform’s basket.

“As seen in the past year, Facebook and other social media channels can change the rules of engagement at any time. Diversify your social amplification channels,” it advises.